Leadership Lessons from Wycliffe to Zwingli

I personally love the Wesley Seminary foundations side of the leadership course (the students may not be as excited). Here's a snapshot of today's discussions of leadership lessons from some of the key figures in the lead up to the Reformation:

Wycliffe

• Ideas rarely appear out of the blue but are usually a function of concrete contexts with concrete issues.
• It sure helps to have friends in positions of power. Be careful about biting the hand that feeds you. "Prophets" who just shoot their mouths off aren't as effective as those who are aware of their surroundings.
• It's best to be burned at the stake posthumously.

Pope Urban VI

• Don't tell your enemies what you're going to do before you do it. Don't shoot yourself in the foot.
• You can be right and completely fail because you're stupid.
• Small changes can have big consequences. (Butterfly Effect)
• You don't have to say everything you know.

John Huss

• There is a kairos moment for reform and for a movement--and there's a time and place where you get burned at the stake.
• Trust but verify.

Erasmus

• What you can get away with today, you might not get away with tomorrow, when the situation has changed.
• The perfect is the enemy of the good.
• Accessibility, affordability, early to the game tends to win over quality, complexity and bureaucracy (within certain limits).
• Sometimes if you try to stay in the middle, you tick everyone off.

Luther

• You can never completely tell what the consequences of events will be.
• Don't confuse tradition with the truth.

William Tyndale

• Those who seem important now may not be those remembered by history.
• Fighting against a movement can empower it.
• Sometimes you win in the long term by losing in the short term.

Council of Trent

• Leaders often give their opponents the long term victory by refusing to admit faults and make adjustments in the short term. Leaders tend to get stubborn when confronted and become self-defeating.

Zwingli

• Practice what you preach.
• My way or the highway is usually a losing strategy.
• Demonstrated that sola scriptura doesn't work practically

There's almost always something good in every side.